new neighborhood apartment proposals

Tuesday December 14th at 6:30pm, the Department of Planning and Development will hold a public meeting to gather comments and provide feedback about two separate projects in our neighborhood. The meetings are at Northwest African American Museum, 2400 S Massachusetts St, Studio 1.

The first project is at 3701 S Hudson St, a 136-unit apartment building located at the NW corner of the St Gobain site, behind the Columbia Motors building. The design firm is Runberg Architecture Group and the developer is Harbor Properties. This will be this project's second meeting, and this might be the last chance for neighbors and the Design Review Board to weigh in. That session starts at 6:30pm.

The second is for 4484 Martin Luther King Jr Way S, to the north of the Rainier Vista Boys and Girls Club. It's a 52-unit apartment building intended to house low-income residents. SMR Architects is the designer, and Mercy Housing is the developer. This is the first meeting for this project — it was originally scheduled for 11/22, but it got snowed out. The second session starts at 8pm.

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DPD has canceled the second of these two meetings, the one about Rainier Vista's 52-unit apartment on the east side of MLK. The recommendations meeting is moving forward for Harbor Properties' 136-unit apartments.

There were maybe six neighbors who attended. This is the second of two public meetings, and they got their recommendation from the Board. Next DPD issues its decision.

I think it's generally a successful design. They focused a lot on the courtyard facing 37th Ave S. There's a residential lobby on the NE corner, and live-work units further to the west along Hudson.

I'd originally suggested the NE corner should be commercial, but that didn't get any traction with the Board. As the lobby, it's gotta be on the same level as the rest of the apartments. Given the site's topography, that means the units along 37th are at the same level as the sidewalk. And the architect felt that in order to make for an ample courtyard, they couldn't set those units back. It feels cramped to me, and I bet it'll result in drawn blinds. I would have preferred front stoops.

But that's past, and the project is largely OK. Not sure when Harbor aims to build it.

This building would be located at 3701 S Hudson St, behind the Columbia Motors building, where St Gobain used to have its admin offices. It's located on a piece of a much larger site and is substantially scaled back from Harbor Properties' original concept involving about 600 apartments.

Neighbors, architects, and the Design Review Board pull together on May 10, 2011 for a recommendations meeting related to this design for new apartments along MLK, to the north of the light rail station. They're meeting at the Wellspring Family Services building on Rainier. The meeting starts at 6:30pm.